Work Requirements in Transfer Programs
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (EST)
This session will be streamed live.
- Chair: Tom Buchmueller, University of Michigan
Who Still Participates in TANF? Variation by Exposure to Work Requirements
Abstract
Since its enactment in 1996, participation in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program has steadily declined as fewer income-eligible families enroll. This paper uses administrative records covering the universe of Michigan TANF participants between 2009 and 2019 to characterize how the TANF caseload has changed over time. In particular, we document the role of a 2011 Michigan policy reform in dramatically decreasing caseloads by reducing time limits and increasing penalties for violating work requirements. We identify important compositional differences between participants that comply with work requirements relative to those that violate work requirements. We conclude by describing future opportunities to quantify the downstream economic consequences of policies reducing enrollment in TANF.Labor Supply Responses to Income: Evidence from Child Tax Benefits
Abstract
Many U.S. safety-net programs condition benefit eligibility on work. Eliminating work requirements would better target benefits to the neediest families but would also attenuate pro-work incentives. We study how expanding child tax credits to non-workers affects maternal labor supply, using administrative tax records and variation in state credit eligibility from quasi-random birth-timing. We employ a novel method for using placebo analyses to maximize the precision of our regression discontinuity estimator. Eliminating work requirements causes very few mothers to exit the labor force; our 95% confidence intervals exclude reductions over one-third of one percent.A Tale of Two States: Reconciling Medicaid Work Requirement Enrollment Impacts in Georgia and Arkansas
Abstract
Medicaid is a means-tested program jointly administered by states and the federal government to provide health insurance to low-income individuals. A commonly discussed potential Medicaid policy reform is the imposition of work requirements. The only two states to have actually implemented Medicaid work requirements to date – Arkansas and Georgia - demonstrate disparate results. Arkansas implemented work requirements from 2018-2019, and 71.0% - 92.1% of beneficiaries were deemed compliant with the work requirement policy each month. Georgia has implemented work requirements through a limited expansion program since 2023, but uptake has been very low: of the 345,000 individuals estimated to be eligible for the program, only 1.9%, at the time of writing, have enrolled. While the circumstances of the work requirements differed in each state – in Arkansas, this was deployed on the pre-existing Affordable Care Act expansion group, while in Georgia on a newly eligible population – the significantly different impacts on enrollment of these two Medicaid work requirements poses a puzzle. We argue that the key factor that can reconcile these results is the method of work requirement reporting. In order to comply with the work requirement policy, individuals must report their work or exemption status to the state. In Arkansas, this process was largely automated by the state using behind-the-scenes data-matching from disparate administrative databases, thus minimizing reporting burden on individuals. In Georgia, however, no such data-matching occurred. Using results from Arkansas, we estimate that if all individuals were required to manually report their work or exemption status, only 2.3% would do so, which aligns with the experience from Georgia. Thus, the method of work requirement reporting is an important modeling input for work requirement impact estimates, and should be included in analyses of work requirement policies.Discussant(s)
Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
,
Georgetown University
Marianne Bitler
,
University of California-Davis
Robert Moffitt
,
Johns Hopkins University
Lara Shore-Sheppard
,
Williams College
JEL Classifications
- J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor
- J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs